Listening: A Strategy and Marketing Blog | Hosfeld & Associates

By Kathleen Hosfeld

We live in an exciting time during which companies are questioning traditional models of marketing, and are pioneering new approaches that create better financial returns. More importantly, more companies are raising the ethical bar on their marketing and seeking to earn both the trust and loyalty of the market. Stakeholder marketing is an approach that does both. It’s something that you may hear more about in the coming months.

What is stakeholder marketing?  It’s an approach that recognizes that the “market” is not just a narrowly defined customer target (or series of customer segments). It perceives that customers are interconnected with employees, vendors, government and community, the environment and more.  It’s based on the premise that in order to effectively conduct commercial transactions companies must engage with a system of interconnected partners, known as stakeholders.

In the article Transformation of Marketing, I have identified three elements of the emerging model of marketing practiced by high-integrity companies: embracing a systems perspective, creating social good, and living the brand. Stakeholder marketing is an important part of embracing a systems perspective because it engages with the marketplace as such a dynamic system. It can also reflect the intention to create social good, depending on the degree of mutuality to which the company aspires.

The intention of those who’ve practiced stakeholder marketing is to establish, cultivate and deepen positive relationships of trust between their organization and the groups directly affected by their activities. These relationships result in cooperation that helps a company further its goals. For many who practice stakeholder marketing, their goals include service to stakeholders as an end in itself not as a means to an end. Some organizations may see the value of stakeholder relationships only in terms of how they might help the organization achieve goals for growth or profit. Research indicates that stakeholder orientation in a firm correlates to improved financial performance. However, as those who have practiced stakeholder marketing will tell you, the rewards can be far greater.

In the book Firms of Endearment, the authors assert that stakeholder marketing creates such positive relationships and perceptions with stakeholders, that those who practice it spend less to get the word out and to shape public perceptions of their brand. They benefit from significant word of mouth that is fueled by customer loyalty and advocacy.

Serving Instead of Managing

A primary characteristic of stakeholder marketing is that it is not an attempt to manage or control perceptions or behavior. Rather it expresses itself in efforts to engage stakeholders collaboratively to create value together. It incorporates a strong ethic of service not just to customers but also to other partners in the value chain. The following provides an evolving series of stances that organizations can take or have taken in response to stakeholders.

Prior to the advent of the Internet, companies with the financial resources to do so could more easily control the information that audiences received about products or services. Customers and other stakeholders had neither the time nor the money to fully investigate all the companies from whom they might purchase products or services, or with whom they might work. As a result, during this time companies assumed that marketing’s role was to create and protect perceptions of the firm and its products in order to sell.

With the advent of the Internet, all stakeholders gained considerable new information about and influence over perceptions of companies, products and services. Stakeholders were better able to communicate out their experiences of a product, service or company. Other stakeholders were able to access this information, giving them information to either confirm or undermine the company’s own messages. As companies lost some of their ability to control those perceptions, marketing became somewhat more collaborative and transparent. “Managing” perceptions and key stakeholder relationships was an evolution in marketing that acknowledged the difficulty of maintaining control while still seeing control as desirable.

Stakeholder marketing takes a leap into the void by ceding a great deal of control and shifting to an attitude of servant leadership in the exchange process. According to research on companies who practice stakeholder marketing, such companies disclose more, share their standards, ask for feedback and act on the feedback they receive. A company that adopts stakeholder marketing sees innovation potential in finding ways to align stakeholder needs with its own, and has confidence in the good will, loyalty and trust that the process will generate.

Implications for Marketing Planning

How does a stakeholder orientation change marketing planning? In a traditional environment, the company takes in information (from the sales force, from research, from analysts) and uses this to formulate its marketing strategies. In stakeholder marketing, the information gathering process broadens to employees, vendors/suppliers, distributors, communities and regulators – the stakeholder groups that the company identifies as appropriate to its situation  — and continues as a form of dialogue. Gathering information from stakeholder groups, feeding this information to the right internal audiences within the company, and formulating responses are the inhale and the exhale of stakeholder marketing. This can seem overwhelming if the company does not have a clear sense of direction and mission. This is provided by clear value propositions.

Value propositions are important ordering agents in traditional marketing planning. They are also extremely valuable in helping companies align stakeholder needs in a stakeholder marketing planning process.  The process of establishing a value proposition allows a company to define what it does best and how it contrasts with competitors or substitutes. In traditional marketing, however, the value proposition is created with only one target audience: the customer.  In stakeholder marketing, value propositions created for each stakeholder group help to fully develop and articulate both marketing goals and brand values. Creating these propositions also helps identify areas that need to be aligned or reconciled. As a result, marketing strategies become more robust, and marketing efforts more focused. (See related article on value propositions.)

Is it Marketing or is it Management?

One of the tricky things about stakeholder marketing is that it is difficult to isolate the actions of stakeholder-oriented firms that are discretely marketing focused. This, of course, depends on your definition of marketing.  In the Michael Porter Value Chain model, marketing is the function of communicating and selling that happens later in the process of supposedly “creating value.”

If, however, your definition of marketing is like Peter Drucker’s – the entire company as seen through the eyes of the customer – then you believe that all departments and functions hold pieces of the marketing function, and stakeholder marketing identifies the opportunities all along the value chain to create value for all partners – not just customers.  The transformation of marketing requires the adoption of such a systems view which breaks down the silos between strategy, management and marketing.

The Firms of Endearment authors assert that companies with a stakeholder orientation spend less money “on marketing.”  Based on the case histories of the book, which include Costco, Harley Davidson, and other recognizable names, I disagree. What may more likely be true, however, is that these companies spend less money on sales and promotional efforts – such as advertising – that seek to form or build positive awareness for their goods or services.  Why? By virtue of their organizational behavior, and fostering authentic, positive relationships with stakeholders, they have earned such positive awareness. They don’t need to buy it.

As a result, I am tempted to think of principle-based stakeholder marketing as more than an approach. It’s also a philosophy of marketing that is collectively held by all members of the firm. If all company’s decisions are focused on the question of “what creates mutual value between our firm and our partners” the decisions that have the potential to benefit profit and growth can be made virtually anywhere in the organization.

Getting started. Would you like more information on how to get started exploring or understanding how to implement stakeholder marketing? I am working on another article to describe that process. Let me know what you’d like that to cover. Please contact me with your questions and ideas.

By Kathleen M. Hosfeld

Companies engage in sustainability initiatives in stages.  Starting small, and usually with operations-oriented steps, companies’ first experience with sustainability is focused on saving money.  Creating new revenues from sustainability happens at deeper stages of engagement.  At these deeper stages, marketing, which may have been only peripherally involved before, now plays a strategic role in creating new opportunities to fulfill sustainability’s potential to the company and to stakeholders.

We’ve written before about the various stage models of sustainability engagement and how marketing shows up at each stage. In the early stages, when companies are experimenting with waste, energy and resource management issues, their focus is on cost savings. This doesn’t translate well to marketing action, although in some rare cases, such as Cisco’s used equipment recycling program, it can become a new line of business.

Changes in the environmental features of products and services that occur in the middle stages of sustainability engagement can prompt marketing departments to redefine their respective value propositions. They can also activate marketing’s promotional, publicity and public affairs capacities to manage perceptions around green washing (allegations of superficial claims of environmental benefits).

At the deeper levels of sustainability engagement, where companies seek to fully integrate sustainability into product and service design and business model development, marketing plays a strategic role. At this stage, the ability to research and interpret customer wants and needs is essential to tapping the top line potential of the commitment to sustainability. It’s a significant opportunity for marketing to make a strategic contribution to the direction and focus of the organization.

Team-Based Innovation Planning: Baking it In

Up to this point, the changes the company has been undergoing are technical changes. You can hire a consultant to help you conduct a lifecycle analysis, measure your carbon footprint, advise on resource, energy and waste strategies.  But redesigning and re-imagining whole products, services and lines of business from a sustainability standpoint is “adaptive change.” At this stage, sustainability has been bolted on, now the task is to bake it in from scratch. It’s probably not something that anyone in the organization has done before. As a result, executives assembling and commissioning teams to do this work need to consider how best to convene, commission, guide and support them.

Start from the Future – In the September 2009 edition of Harvard Business Review, R. Nidumolu, C.K. Prahalad, and M.R. Rangaswami write about research they have conducted with 30 companies integrating sustainability into their operations. “Don’t start from the present,” they advise.  Rather, start from a desired future state and work back. When Hosfeld & Associates works with clients on these issues we like to start with the question: “What is the change we want to see in the world because of our work?” What business should we be in as a result?

Feed the Process With New Insights – At this stage of sustainability engagement, customers and other stakeholders can play a co-creative role. Effective design and implementation of customer and stakeholder research can tap insights that will feed the innovation process. Marketing specialists on the innovation team best help other departments interpret research and learn how to understand customer needs.  Great ideas can also come from anywhere in the organization.  Effective approaches to sustainability innovation will tap the hidden genius of the organization.

Build Engagement From the Start — The result of the planning process will be a strategy that must be implemented. As my colleague Ron Benton says “to be effective, strategy has to be constructed and owned by those who execute it.” This means creating cross-functional teams across organizational silos that can work together to solve complex problems. It also means creating opportunities for engagement during the planning process with those who may not participate directly in it.

Mitigate the Challenges of Change – As an adaptive process, strategic sustainability innovation has the potential to create anxiety. It’s important to anticipate the anxiety of change and provide innovation teams with new tools. Building the team’s capacity to have fearless, frank and authentic dialogue and move quickly through areas of disagreement is fundamental. This means using conflict and resistance as tools for learning. Clear objectives and metrics can also provide guidance and support for making good decisions, assuring engagement and supporting execution.

Keep It Moving – If the goal is competitive advantage, strategic sustainability innovation can’t get hung up on internal turf squabbles, or get squashed by the tyranny of day to day operations. Organizations seeking this type of advantage must support teams with clear direction and the resources to keep it a top priority.

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If you are interested in knowing more about how to integrate marketing’s capacity for innovation with your sustainability initiative, please contact us.

Check out the Sustainability and Innovation edition “How Green Will Save Us” Harvard Business Review

An emerging model from high-integrity organizations

By Kathleen M. Hosfeld

The phone rings at our house on any given evening. A member of our family looks at the caller ID. “It’s Evans Glass,” he or she calls out to the rest of the house. The call goes unanswered. This is one of between four to 10 calls we receive from Evans Glass each week. We made the mistake once of talking to someone going door to door offering estimates for window replacements. When we found out that the estimate process would take two hours, we said, “No, this isn’t what we want.” We asked that they not contact us again. They have continued to call. And call. And call.

This is one of the practices that have led to another kind of call – a call to “reform” marketing. These and other common marketing practices “work” for companies – they do result in sales. However, research shows that there’s a long-term consequence associated with intrusive and coercive tactics: cynicism and resistance on the part of consumers. Studies by the American Association of Advertising Agencies and Yankelovich show that from 1964 to 2004, the number of people who say their feelings about advertising have become negative grew from 15% to 60%. Forty-five percent of consumers say that the amount of advertising they are exposed to every day detracts from their experience of everyday life (Yankelovich). Yet, companies are spending more to overcome resistance, doing more of that which created the resistance in the first place. This is a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle.

What’s to stop it? Some believe that more regulation is the answer. While regulation and public policy always play an important role in systems change, a change from within – a transformation – will ultimately reach parts of the system that regulation can’t touch. Pioneering firms have been blazing this trail for almost two decades and research is starting to show that companies that take a higher road are achieving higher returns as a result (Studies by Sisodia, Raj, Jag Sheth, and David B. Wolfe in 2007; Sully de Luque et al. in 2008; Kearney in 2009).

The Emerging Model

Consider this article an introduction to a much wider conversation about how pioneering firms are transforming marketing. To start that conversation, I’m offering a 50,000 foot level management perspective of the model of marketing that is emerging as an alternative to the vicious cycle described above. This includes sustainability and the triple-bottom-line, but this is not a model of sustainability marketing per se. It’s meant to suggest a model of marketing that is emerging in companies who have made sustainability a way of life and are continuing to evolve. I have avoided references to tactical execution and, for now, case histories. I’ve avoided elements that might be more appropriate for specific industries (hard goods manufacturers), and tried to synthesize elements that are universal to all firms.

In working with clients, I often translate assessments into “Key Issues” for the sake of simplifying what must be addressed to accomplish their objectives. Key Issues are sheltering wings under which a variety of other issues or factors can find a home. In the following diagram and text, I frame three “Key Issues” for transforming marketing, and some (but not all) of the factors they represent.

A Fundamental Assumption: The most important difference between companies that are transforming their marketing practice is their interpretation of the purpose of marketing. In traditional practice marketing is about “selling stuff.” This follows the perception of the purpose of the business, which is to create profit. In firms that are transforming or have transformed marketing, marketing is about creating value for stakeholders – not as a means to an end (profit) but rather as the end in itself. Within this shift, profit is the measurement of how well the organization is achieving that end.

Embracing a Systems Perspective - A competence required for this emerging model is the ability to navigate complexity and engage with diverse, complex, adaptive systems. In transforming marketing, this includes issues such as:

Adopting a Multi-Stakeholder Orientation – In transformed marketing, the organization enlarges its focus from stockholders to stakeholders who include investors, employees, customers, partners and society. The intent is not to “manage” stakeholders but to serve them.

Cross-Functional Collaboration – In the traditional paradigm, marketing is frequently siloed and given increasingly tactical focus. In transformed marketing, value creation for stakeholders (marketing) is everyone’s job and requires cross-functional collaboration across departments – finance, human resources, manufacturing.

Industry Collaboration and Partnerships – Organizations transforming marketing are not isolated competitors seeking dominance and hoarding information. Rather they participate in industry collaborations to advance standards or other initiatives for the benefit of stakeholders.

Reclaiming the Marketing Mix – In traditional practice, marketing has increasingly focused on sales and promotion due to an emphasis on measurement. Organizations that are transforming marketing seek to maximize stakeholder benefit through all aspects of the marketing mix (product, price, promotion, distribution/sales). These marketing decisions may not take place in the marketing department per se but through cross-functional collaboration.

Creating Social Good – A radical departure from serving simply the profit motive, to one that says profit is the measure of how much value or benefit the firm creates for stakeholders. This includes issues such as:

Purpose and Culture Founded on Ethics and Responsibility – There’s a constant focus in these organizations around “doing the right thing,” which begins with purpose and a culture that supports ethical action.

Defining Success Beyond Profit – Financial measures are insufficient determinants of success for many organizations who care deeply about their impacts on the environment, on customers, on employees, vendors and more. Whether it’s two, three, four or more “bottomlines” – transformed marketing evaluates success in more than financial terms.

Organizational “Calling” – Those practicing transformed marketing are guided by goals that serve a shared understanding of the organization’s “calling” or intent to create stakeholder (or world) benefit.

Sharing Power in Exchange Relationships – Transformed marketing seeks to create partnerships with stakeholders in which power is shared. This capacity separates these organizations from those that are merely well intentioned, yet feel entitled to cajole customers into decisions that are “good for them” or to “sell what we make” without meaningful input from the customer or market.

Living the Brand – From one perspective brands are “perceptions” that are created to influence purchase decisions. In organizations practicing transformed marketing, however, the brand IS the company, and the company lives the brand. It’s not perception. It’s reality. Branding campaigns seek to create awareness of that reality, not to create it virtually. Elements of this include:

Brand Rooted in Clear Differentiation Strategy – In transformed marketing the brand is rooted in a solid business model that articulates a long-term strategy for creating value for stakeholders distinct from that of other firms. By contrast, head-to-head competition or competition on perception alone reinforces the vicious cycle of promotion to compete, leading to ethical “trade-offs”, and a firm-centric view.

Operations Aligned to Fulfill Brand Promises – The “operational side of branding” means taking the brand deeply into every aspect of the organization. This requires translating the implications of the brand for the day-to-day functions of departments. Representative questions to ask in this process include: What type of person should we hire to reflect the brand values? How does the brand change what our office looks like? How do I need to share information with other departments in order to help them live the brand?

Commitment to Stakeholder Benefit - The “right thing to do” in a transformed marketing environment is a radical commitment to making sure all aspects of brand execution translate into benefit for stakeholders. This includes ongoing reflection and action concerning methods of creating products/services, their features and benefits, the materials they use and the transparency with which the supply chain is managed.

Continuing The Conversation

Although the era of sustainability shines a brighter light on companies who practice marketing in this way, many companies – including ours and our clients’ – have been marketing in the spirit of the emerging model for years if not decades – long before frameworks for sustainability or the triple bottom line were as accessible as they are today. As more organizations adopt social enterprise models and similar forms that blend mission and revenue creation, transformed marketing offers an approach that better fits their values.

Many of the companies who have been pioneering in this model have done so based on the intuitive conviction that it was simply “the right thing to do.” We are fortunate in this time that research, including the studies referenced above, is confirming their collective hunch that a seemingly radical commitment to marketing that works for all also turns out to be a good way to make money. Many today are trying to approach the triple bottom line from a single-bottom-line perspective. Perhaps now there’s enough empirical research to encourage such firms to explore this emerging model more deeply.

There are many stories to tell and many interrelated ideas to unpack as we continue our own exploration. We’d love to hear from you about your experiences, ideas and questions.

Finding your way through the razzle dazzle

Are you a member of a progressive organization trying to figure out what types of marketing strategies will 1) work for you, and 2) fit your values? If you are then you’ve no-doubt run into a blizzard of marjarg (marketing jargon) that ’s both dizzying and disorienting.  Marjarg outside the world of progressive values is bad enough – buzz, spin, viral, marcomm, Web 2.0, SEO, etc.  When entering the realm of sustainability oriented, or corporately responsible marketing, you may be even more confused.  To get you started, here are a few definitions of marketing terminology you may encounter.

Green Marketing – Green marketing is often used as short-hand for any kind of marketing that attempts to include the values of sustainability. According to the American Marketing Associations, however, green marketing is marketing that focuses primarily on the environmental benefits of either the product/service being marketed or the environmental qualities of the process of promotion/advertising.  Green marketing is typically focused on the product and the promotional aspects of the marketing mix. So far, I have yet to see a comprehensive model of green marketing that takes into account all aspects of the marketing function (product, price, promotion, distribution/sales).

Triple-Bottom-Line Marketing – This is a seldom-used term, but one that speaks to marketing practices that seek to account for financial, social and environment measures of success. As a result of this, triple-bottom-line marketing seeks to address more of these measures in all aspects of the marketing mix. Just as there is no comprehensive model of marketing for Green Marketing there’s even less written about triple-bottom-line marketing.

Stakeholder Marketing – Stakeholder marketing is based on stakeholder theory which asserts that companies are obligated to a variety of stakeholders not just investors, stockholders and owners. Although the argument has been primarily an ethical one, recent studies demonstrate that this orientation makes companies more profitable as well.  The primary stakeholders included are investors, employees, customers, partners and society. Stakeholder marketing is “an orientation toward a firm’s marketing activities that goes beyond consideration of the firm’s immediate targeted consumers to include others that may be impacted by their activities. It considers impacts of marketing activities on a larger base of constituents, and encourages consideration of the impact of these constituents in fashioning marketing activities.”(Gregory Gundlach, University of North Florida). The Aspen Institute has collaborated with Boston University in hosting the Stakeholder Marketing Conference. Exemplary firms that practice Stakeholder Marketing are profiled in the book: Firms of Endearment.

Social Marketing – Social marketing is the application of business-oriented marketing principles and practices typically in a non-profit , government or NGO contexts  to change behavior to achieve a social good.  In practice however, this term is being used as short-hand for Social Media Marketing. Social Media Marketing is the process of engaging online communities like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn to generate exposure, opportunity and sales. Social Marketing got its start with nonprofit organizations trying to effect behavioral changes such as reducing smoking, and encouraging the use of condoms. Social Marketing seeks to create behavior change that does not necessarily involve a purchase that benefits the marketer’s organization.

Social Media Marketing – As referenced above, Social Media Marketing is the process of engaging online communities via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn to generate exposure, opportunity and sales. Another term for Social Media Marketing is Social Networking. Today, many who are unaware of Social Marketing as a discrete discipline are using that term to refer to Social Media Marketing. Social Media Marketing is not primarily concerned with values, sustainability or the triple bottom line, although it represents a set of tools that may be used by organizations who are.

Service Dominant Logic – Service Dominant Logic (SDL) is used by its authors (Robert F. Lusch, University of Arizona, and Stephen L. Vargo, University of Hawaii) to describe what they consider to be radical reframe of the marketing process. One element of SDL is to redefine everything that an organization sells as a “service” whether it is a physical good or an intangible service or experience.  By “service” they mean the benefit of the good sold.  This shifts the perspective of the seller from one of a manufacturing focus (inward) to a customer/market focus (outward.) The second element of SDL is the notion of “co-creation” of value between the customer and the company. The company consciously gives equal power to the customer in the exchange process through intentional interaction.  While laudable in its intent, SDL assumes that all customers want to co-create their experiences with companies. Real world situations demonstrate that when offered a co-creative opportunity not all consumers want one.

The TARES Test – The TARES test is a five-point test for what the authors call “ethical persuasion.” Published by Sherry Baker, a professor at Brigham Young University, and David L Martinson, of Florida International University, the TARES test seeks to establish robust principles for ethics in marketing and to support the creation of a more ethical approach to persuasion – particularly commercial persuasion such as that which takes place in the marketing process. The TARES test consists of five principles: Truthfulness (of the message), Authenticity (of the persuader), Respect (for the persuadee), Equity (of the persuasive appeal) and Social Responsibility (for the common good).The TARES test is included in some marketing and advertising text books and can also be found here. The TARES test is used primarily in evaluating advertising and promotional materials, but could also extend to sales and other persuasive business speech.

Do you have another example of marjarg or have a question about a term? Contact Us. We’ll try to answer your questions and respond to your comments.

At some point in the lives of many of America’s newspapers, their purpose shifted. Many went from seeking to “empower a democratic society with a free press” to “delivering an audience to advertisers.”

We in the Seattle area watched this month as nearly three decades of changes in the newspaper industry brought down the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It would be simplistic to say that loss of the original purpose was the turning point in the newspaper industry’s demise. Many complex factors including the rise of the Internet have contributed to their current dire circumstances.

While many reporters and editors remained motivated by the ideal of a free press, their management was focused on a specific form of revenue creation (selling advertising) which did not allow newspapers to adapt as the market has changed.

Ted Levitt made this point years ago in his famous “Marketing Myopia” article: adapting over time means focusing on the evolving needs of customers, not selling a particular business model. Holding fast to the importance of a free press as an agent of enlightened democracy might have helped newspapers cling less tightly to the advertising paradigm and evolve their revenue models in service of the greater purpose.

A focus on how we seek to make the world a better place helps companies stay clear and resilient in troubled times.  When economic conditions are volatile, business models focused on purpose provide clarity about what needs to change and what should never change in the business. This focus on purpose does four things for an organization:

• Provides a strategic focal point for aligning all aspects of the organization
• Creates the basis for powerful, trust-based marketing
• Establishes a foundation for positive corporate culture, and
• Taps the motivation and passion of employees and other stakeholders.

According to an article in the February 12 Gallup Management Journal, it’s more critical than ever that businesses and customers know what companies stand for.

The article describes the work of GSD&M Idea City in Austin Texas, a branding agency, as it helped Southwest Airlines describe their purpose. While many see Southwest as simply the low-cost provider, for founder Herb Kelleher, the point is making air travel accessible. The agency gave him the language to describe his purpose: “democratizing the skies.”

A friend of Hosfeld & Associates, Kip Gregory, author of Winning Clients in a Wired World, also runs a purpose-driven business. He works with clients to help them tap the enormous potential of the Internet and everyday technology to make their businesses more profitable. For Kip, the Internet is a banquet and many businesses can’t find the door in.

In talking with Kip about his purpose, I paraphrased: “You’re not in the technology business, Kip, you’re in the abundance business. Hundreds of the resources you share with clients are free, and yet they offer the opportunity for breakthroughs in productivity and profits.”

Kip is successful because people recognize he’s not a geek who loves technology (not that there’s anything wrong with being a technology-loving geek); but a client champion who uses technology to make them more successful.

Studies suggest that purpose-driven businesses outperform companies without a purpose. Southwest Airlines is one of several firms cited in the book Firms of Endearment, which describes the characteristics and performance of companies committed to a purpose. Firms of Endearment (or FoEs) that they studied returned a 1,026 percent for investors over the 10 years ending June 30, 2006, compared to a 122 percent return for the S&P 500.

Companies with purpose are not immune to economic downturns. Some of the firms described in the book, including Harley Davidson, have taken significant hits in the last several months. Yes, further studies suggest that companies committed to purpose recover more quickly after economic challenges.

Companies with purpose, those that take a stand and build their business on making the world a better place, stand out with consumers. They foster trust and loyalty. Companies with loyal customers succeed in good markets, and have more going for them in difficult times.

If you’d like to find out how to align your organization’s operations and brand around a compelling purpose, please contact us.

As blogs have evolved beyond a form of vanity publishing to become established vehicles for business communication, clients and colleagues have asked us to tell them why they should develop a blog. The benefits of blogging vary by industry and size of business. Here are just some examples:

Experts and Speakers – Blogs are places where media find guests and interview subjects on unique topics. Elisabeth Squires, known for her expertise on women’ breasts, says that she was booked on Good Morning America and the Tyra Banks show after producers found her blog.  The media coverage in turn results in speaking engagements: “Most of my speaking engagements have been referrals and through media coverage,” she says.  Speakers or experts who are interested in writing a book, may develop their material on their blog, shaping the content as they get feedback from their audience.

Consultants and Members of the “Creative Class” — For those that make their living through ideas, creativity and innovation, blogs are places to demonstrate your credibility and brilliance. Blogs are places to share knowledge and your most recent work. Kim Screen, founder of Good Stock, a press and bindery firm that makes custom books, uses her blog to share recent projects and to connect with customers.  “Blogging (both writing my own and reading other blogs) is like my office water cooler – the way I connect with people,” she says.

Manufacturers – Blogs are the lifeblood of the high tech industry, whether you are a software or hard ware manufacturer. Corporate and developer blogs are where reputations for quality rise and fall, and where providing fast-response technical advisories can be a matter of survival.

Professionals and Advisors – Attorneys, financial advisors, accountants and other professionals who deal in environments where laws, standards and rules are frequently changed or re-interpreted  can use blogs to keep readers apprised of changes. Making this expertise available helps position the professionals as experts, which may bring in more clients.

For many of these types of businesses and more, the well-designed blog becomes a search engine magnet that can be used to point organic (unpaid) traffic to the company’s main web. The ultimate success of a blog is to provide content so valuable that other bloggers link to you.  With the effective use of keywords, proper submission of the blog to directories, and effective linking strategies, blogs can make a valuable contribution to the overall visibility of the web site, and, as a result, your company.

If you’d like additional information about how to use blogs to achieve your business objectives, please contact us.

In the world of information technology, many companies offer services directed towards “infrastructure optimization.”  They establish a strong understanding of how the client’s business works. Then they examine how well the technology assets serve the business model. This assessment typically covers people, processes and technology and their interrelationships.  The optimization assessment yields suggestions for how to make the client more profitable through adjustments and additions to people, processes and physical technology assets. In some cases, when the business has evolved beyond its current infrastructure, the outcome means significant strategic change.

Optimizing organizational strategy follows the same general outline.  It starts with understanding of how a business works, and what is working well.  It must look at marketing practice (similar to processes), the people/human elements that make strategy successful (individual and cultural), and technology (systems, IT and otherwise) that support the strategy.  A strategy optimization process leverages the best assets, the best of what’s working, and identifies the potential for growth.

Strategy optimization starts from the perspective that the management of strategy is equally important to the creation of strategy. Many companies craft wonderful strategies that are poorly implemented.  Successful strategy optimization looks at both the structural integrity of the strategy as well as the management environment in which it thrives.